Abstract
Purpose :
Despite the impact of uveitis, our knowledge of its epidemiology is limited. To our knowledge, there have been no published studies describing the epidemiology of uveitis in the Bronx, and limited studies focusing on the risk associations for developing uveitis. The purpose of our study is to examine the strength of associations between the presence of uveitis and demographic factors, as well as systemic diagnoses.
Methods :
A retrospective case-control study of the risk associations for uveitis. The case group consisted of Bronx residents who were diagnosed with new onset active uveitis (incident cases), excluding acute traumatic and typical postoperative inflammation, who were seen in the Montefiore Ophthalmology Department between July 1st, 2013 and December 31st, 2014. Potential cases were identified using Montefiore’s Clinical Looking Glass (CLG) software via outpatient ICD9 codes. Controls were randomly selected at a 4:1 ratio using CLG to identify Bronx residents seen in the Montefiore Medical System throughout the study period, without uveitis. All charts were reviewed to confirm whether the patients met the inclusion criteria, and to collect demographic/clinical data for all study participants at the time of the initial visit. Firth’s logistic regression was used to explore associations between the presence of uveitis, and the following potential risk factors: socioeconomic status (SES), race/ethnicity, age, gender, HIV, smoking status, atopic disease (asthma/atopic dermatitis), and diabetes mellitus (DM). Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated to estimate relative risk.
Results :
From July 1st, 2013 through December 31rd, 2014 there were a total of 157 confirmed cases of uveitis, 98 of which were identified as new onset or incident cases. 392 controls were selected as a comparison group for the multivariate analysis. Of the variables analyzed, multivariate analysis found significant association between incident cases of uveitis and increasing age (p < 0.0001; 95% CI: 1.01 to 1.03), DM (p=0.0012; 95% CI: 0.16 to 0.62), and asthma (p=0.0157; 95% CI: 1.13 to 3.32).
Conclusions :
There was increased risk of new onset uveitis shown with increasing age and patients with asthma. While the presence of DM was associated with a decreased risk of uveitis, further exploration of the type and severity of diabetes is warranted.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.